Jersey Rules: Devils 5, Hurricanes 2

The Carolina Hurricanes entered the third period with a 2-1 lead and had 1:30 of powerplay time to begin the period, but ended up squandering the opportunity and then allowed four third period goals as they dropped the game to the New Jersey Devils, 5-2 in front of 15,034 at the PNC Arena on Friday night.

Two streaks came to an end, the Devils had lost three in a row and the Canes won two in a row, and both teams now have identical, 10-11-5 records.

It was another slow first period for the Hurricanes as they fell behind 1-0 while allowing 14 shots on goal as they only took five.  Mark Fayne lit the lamp late in the period when he found an opening.

The Hurricanes came back hard in the second period and scored twice, first on a Jeff Skinner shot just 1:53 into the period.  Ryan Murphy took a shot that bounced out to his former junior teammate and Skinner made no mistake.

Later in the period, Justin Faulk rifled a beautiful two line pass to Jordan Staal, who had found an opening during a Jersey line change.  Staal made a nice move on Cory Schneider to put the home team up 2-1 and everything was looking good.

The Hurricanes were previously 6-0-1 when leading after two periods, but this third period would be all New Jersey.  The Devils scored three of the goals in just five minutes and nine seconds as Cam Ward may have ended up getting a bit tired as the shots looked to be stoppable.

With just 3:29 left, Jaromir Jagr would make it 5-2 and many fans started making their way to the exits.

After being outshot 14-5 in the first period, the Canes were once again outshot, 11-5 in the third.  They were out-gunned 31-18 for the game.

After the game, Kirk Muller said that his team had too many passengers and they needed to be more consistent.  He did not seem happy with the effort.

Next up will be Vancouver at home on Sunday afternoon.

Game Notes:

• Justin Faulk had a team high 25:33 of ice time.  Low man was Riley Nash with 8:47.  The team missed injured Andrej Sekera as they had continual difficulty getting the puck out of their own end.
  
• The team only had 18 shots for the game and were led by Eric Staal with three.  The captain was pointless and his point streak ended at seven games.
  
• Carolina had 20 blocked shots and were led by Jay Harrison and Brett Bellemore with three each.
• Manny Malhotra had six hits. Tuomo Ruutu and Harrison were next with five.  The team had 33 for the game compared to 19 for Jersey.
• Carolina was 0-3 on the powerplay.  Jersey was 1-3.